Iechris's Herb garden

So far, ‘Purple Ruffles’ does not seem to come too true from seed for me, at least the seed I’ve gotten (Burpee). There seem to be a lot of solid color plants and not much ruffling. I think next year I will need to prick out all the non-purple seedlings and maybe resow a few times.

I have seriously ignored the herb garden this spring/summer what with all my tomatoes and hydrangeas to worry about.

I just realized that I never even wrote down when I sowed the sweet basil. It has been trying to flower, so I finally got around to cutting it off some and now I have enough basil to finally make pesto. I’m low on pine nuts at the moment, so it will have to wait until tomorrow.

When I was looking at the herbs, I noticed that one part of my lime basil was starting to flower as well, so I pinched that off and oh my… did the lime basil ever smell good! I’ve got to find something to do with it and harvest some of it. It has grown well so far and that smell… Yep, it has made the grow next year list.

My dill in the herb barrel is flowering and the parsley in my yellow/green pot is bolting, so I will need to replace it. I think I will actually take that whole pot apart and divide up the lemon thyme, as i think it might be trying to take over. The golden oregano seems to be doing well, but the lemon thyme is looking a big ragged.

My pot of tricolor sage and silver thyme looks great right now, but I do think the silver thyme is probably trying to take over the whole pot again.

The rosemarys that I’ve potted up are looking pretty good, especially the one that has been in the back yard all along. It really has a lovely form right now.

I guess over all there isn’t much to do in the herb world right now, as I don’t think this is the best time of year for tearing apart pots and dividing plants. I’ll wait until the weather cools down. I am somewhat disappointed in my mints this year, most of them came back very ragged and with only a few upright stems. I’m wondering if they all aren’t just too over crowded in their pots. I may try to divide them as well.

The rosemary has been hanging on the fence into the back yard ever since I put up my big summer hanging baskets. I bought a shepherd’s crook for it, but ended up putting a big pot of million bells on that instead. I have another shepherd’s crook that I think I’ll use for the rosemary, but I just have to figure out where to go with it. Until then, it seems to be doing okay on the fence.

All the Genovese seeds I’ve started have been around tomatoes. This method worked well for me last year, but this year the tomatoes have grown quite quickly into HUGE plants that are totally shading out the basil seedlings. So, when I was emptying out pots of violas, I turned one into what I hope will be a pot of Genovese basil.

This time last year, I was making pesto and due to my seeds around the tomatoes not doing well, I only have one pot of usable basil at this point. I’m hoping this new pot will grow well and maybe next month I’ll be making pesto.

I have seen flower stalks on the parsley in the mixed pot and also the seed grown parsley in the herb barrel. I cut the flower stalks off and hopefully this will keep the plants going for a while still.

Today I finally dumped out the pots that had held the stevia and bronze fennel, as neither had shown any signs of life. The roots on the bronze fennel were all mushy looking, don’t know if it got too cold last winter or what. The stevia didn’t look as bad, just dead. No idea about either, but neither will be replanted as I didn’t use either one and the bronze fennel outgrew its whole “looking pretty is the mixed container” thing.